[spectre] CFP: conf. Women Artists in Central and Eastern Europe (Warsaw, 2-3 Sep 21)

[Andreas Broeckmann]

From: Marika Kuźmicz
Date: Dec 17, 2020
Subject: CFP: Women Artists in Central and Eastern Europe (Warsaw, 2-3 
Sep 21)

Warsaw, Sep 2–03, 2021
Deadline: Jan 15, 2021

Call for Papers: Not Yet Written Stories. Women Artists in Central and 
Eastern Europe (CEE)

Arton Foundation (Warsaw), Latvian Centre for Contemporary Arts (Riga), 
SCCA-Ljubljana, Center for Contemporary Arts (Ljubljana), Office for 
Photography (Zagreb) invite for the conference "Not Yet Written Stories. 
Women Artists in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)" will be held in 
Warsaw in the first week of September 2021. The conference will take 
place at the Academy of Fine Arts or and depending on the situation with 
Covid-19 will be organized also in a hybrid format offering online 
participation.

Participants: early career humanities scholars, curators and artists are 
welcome to apply.

Focus: visual arts before 1989 in relation to woman artist experiences 
and histories in Central and Eastern Europe.

The scholarly “sin of omission” and the exclusion of work by women from 
the canon of art history have resulted in the erasure of the 
achievements of numerous artists. Such omissions have been widespread, 
occurring regardless of socio-political situation. However, women 
artists as well as art historians, critics, curators, gallerists in 
culturally and economically “peripheral” countries, such as those 
formerly behind the Iron Curtain and former Yugoslavia, have been at 
risk of double exclusion on the grounds of both geography and gender. 
While rebuilding new states and socialistic societies after WW2., women 
built themselves up not only politically and culturally, but 
artistically as well. But instead of anticipated advancement of women in 
various fields, society continued to support the domination of the 
traditional patriarchal view. To counteract that situation and with the 
wish to raise bigger awareness of these issues as well as proposing new 
ways of history reading Arton Foundation (Warsaw), Latvian Centre for 
Contemporary Arts (Riga), - SCCA-Ljubljana, Center for Contemporary Arts 
(Ljubljana), and Office for Photography (Zagreb) in 2019 collectively 
started the project “Not Yet Written Stories: Women Artists Archives 
On-line”. The project studies the heritage of women artists in Poland, 
Latvia, Croatia and Slovenia with the aim to recuperate the lost or 
omitted histories of women artists and broaden our understanding of 
recent past. The project maps not only regional contexts and 
collaborations, but also aims to reconsider common points of history 
writing processes investigating gender in social, political, cultural, 
and artistic context within Central and Eastern Europe.

Taking the project initiative and research already completed as the 
starting point, partners are organizing a conference Not Yet Written 
Stories. Women Artists in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)

Throughout the regions we are facing erasure of women from the art 
scene, followed by the notion that behind the Iron Curtain they are less 
recognized due to the low awareness of women artists while the “second 
wave” of feminism and the reception of feminist theories and practices 
in general are still unexplored in the context of art and potential 
connections between women artists and feminists. Women artists were 
culturally and economically peripheral, outside the mainstream of the 
art world, and at risk of double exclusion, due to issues of both 
geography and gender.

By this conference we want to recognize this situation, and educate a 
new generation of researchers, art historians and cultural experts who 
are aware of this state of affairs and have the knowledge and tools to 
bring some positive changes.

The conference aims to provide a space for researchers, scholars and 
artists to network on some topics of mutual interest, and through the 
event discuss the suggested topics, among others:

1. How do we locate and treat “lost” women artists? What social and 
historical reasons have shaped domination over women in CEE? How can we 
define the reasons of women artists’ marginalization?

2. How gender roles were conceptualized in Central and Eastern Europe 
and what discourses related to gender circulated in socialist states? 
Emancipated during WWII, marginalized in the post-war period: how 
patriarchal society treated women despite declarative gender equality 
(proclaimed by state), and how does this situation reflect in art 
circles? How can we shape the position of women artists in art history 
while reconsidering socialist unfulfilled equality?

3. How did women artists see themselves during the Soviet period or in 
Yugoslavia? What were the problems they were facing? What was the 
treatment of women studying at the art academies (huge in numbers, 
almost invisible outside school)? Have there been local or global formal 
and informal initiatives / institutions / collectives devoted to women 
artists in Central and Eastern Europe?

4. Women Artists’ practice - documentation and memorialisation of their 
work. How can we build an alternative future by revisiting the past and 
reinterpreting archives? What can we learn about current political, 
social and feminist struggle while rethinking recent past?

5. What kind of strategies can we develop to appreciate women artists? 
Do we need institutions devoted exclusively to women artists? If yes, 
what kind of?

6. How has “socialist solidarity” impacted history writing? How gender 
relations are imaged and represented in visual arts?

7. What was the role of women in the art field in this period - 
curators, gallerists and art critics alike? Do we remember them in our 
art histories today or are they too marginalised and/or forgotten?Truth 
or dare: women art critics promoting women artists?

Deadlines:
15. Jan. 2021 - proposal submission deadline (in English only, max. 2000 
characters, including spaces)
25. Jan. 2021 - Notification of acceptance
5. Apr. 2021 - delivery of papers with illustrations
6. May 2021 - editors comments sending to the authors
5. Jun. 2021 - authors sending articles after the initial correction
5. May 2021 - 12. Jul. 2021 - peer reviews process
12. Jul. - 1. Sep. 2021 sending articles after reviews and preparing 
shorter versions of the articles as the conference papers
2.-3. Sep. 2021 - the conference
December 2021 - launch of the new issue of “Miejsce” magazine

Papers selected for the conference will be published in the new issue of 
“Miejsce” http://miejsce.asp.waw.pl/en/, the magazine published by the 
Academy of Fine Arts, Warsaw (printed and online version, journal apply 
the procedure double blind review). The organizers of the conference 
will cover travel costs, accomodation and provide fees for the authors 
of accepted articles. The language of the conference: English.

Please send your proposals for a 20-minute presentation (max. 2000 
characters) together with a short bio by 15. January 2021 to: 
miejsce at asp.waw.pl

Supported by Creative Europe
Co-financed by Polish Ministry of Culture and Heritage


Reference / Quellennachweis:
CFP: Women Artists in Central and Eastern Europe (Warsaw, 2-3 Sep 21). 
In: ArtHist.net, Dec 17, 2020. <https://arthist.net/archive/24159>.